DragonShadow

Version 1.1.0 is done! I got a little bit carried away while fixing up issues and rebuilt the optional CSAR/CAS objective featuring Ferret :lol:. I'm quite happy with how it came out, scripted events and all. It gives the CSAR aircraft more to do, and allows them to further affect the battlefield. Changelog: 1.1.0 - Rebuilt the optional Ferret CSAR (Combat Search And Rescue) objective. Red units at Zhelez must now be defeated first before Ferret can be picked up. - If Ferret is succesfully delivered in time, the players will be rewarded with AFAC (Airborne Forward Air Controller) support! - 33% of blue ground unit crews now survive to provide CSAR players with more to do if no pilot ejections occur. - 33% of red ground unit crews now survive to provide players with less heavy weapons more to do. - Short range CSAR missions will have their time padded to allow approximately 30 seconds for landing. The padding is added to the initial time limit, not during landing. - Fixed Ferret's smoke support incorrectly being still available after picked up.

Hey Rivvern, great to hear you enjoyed the mission :) What kind of a group were you flying with? Anything in particular stick to your mind? Player aircraft? Off the top of my head the problem points would be the CSAR associations (Defined in the medevac script), and the tasking system associations. They both use group names to keep track of players. Otherwise it's mostly testing things such as whether a blue coalition helicopter, etc has entered a zone. What kind of changes were you wanting to make?

Sounds fun! Glad to hear it. I'm curious about some feedback on the higher difficulty version since the balancing has not yet been extensively tested. How did it go?

Hey Blooze, great to hear from you :) It's such a nice thing to hear that Blindsided became one of your favorite missions. I imagine there's an interesting battle story or two in there too then :) So you've had the chance to play through Two-Pin Hedgehog already? Any thoughts on it if so? I hope you've enjoyed it as well. I certainly have some more mission ideas floating about, just waiting for a good time and the right inspiration to get started on them again. It's always fun to see people flying them. I've been putting some finishing touches on Two-Pin Hedgehog 1.1.0, after some CSAR changes and reworking the optional Ferret objective somewhat. I'll still need to test that everything works well, but hopefully should be able to publish soon.

I did a little more testing with the CSAR time limit also. For bit longer flights (Say 18nm) you can gain a fair bit on the clock by flying at speeds higher than 80 knots. Test case: 854 seconds to cover 18 nautical miles, leeway of 2.47% ontop of calculated "fair minimum" in this case. Cruised at around 100 knots, give or take 10 knots for maneuvering. Had by no means optimal flight path, made several course corrections. Still had 162 seconds (18.9% of initially allotted) for making a landing. I've also tested multiple successful flights at 11nm earlier. However I think there is a real scaling issue on very short range CSAR missions. Demonstrated by.. Absolute worst case minimum rescue time is.. 30s * 40m = 1200m, which is about 0.65nm. Assuming similar flying performance, that leaves us with about 5.67s for "landing" :D Sooo perhaps I'll have to tweak at least the short range parameters a bit.

Hey Ranger79, I'm having trouble reproducing this problem. My current test case is in single player to put in two A-10's into the map, one red, one blue. They spawn 25 seconds apart, with no fuel and 0 airspeed which forces the AI to eject. I then enter the hot started Huey and start the mission. The red pilot ejects as expected and generates a unit to pick up and CSAR for red, but no message is received by blue and no tasking is added to list. The blue pilot then ejects and the unit is generated, notification is given to blue and the task appears in the list. Can you give me some further detail on when red CSAR missions are generated for blue? Medevac missions can be generated for blue ground units too by the way, no pilot needs to necessarily be shot down.

Hey Markeebo, glad to hear you've enjoyed the mission. First of all I should check if there's a more correct way of setting a bullseye, to my current understanding it is a relatively arbitrary point agreed upon beforehand. But would one traditionally be centered around friendly forces for example? I imagine someone here on the forums knows. Another location I could certainly also use for it would be the "Moscow" FARP. But aside from that, if you know the location of the bullseye and have a map, you can accurately calculate it from there. Infact the DCS inbuilt map allows you to use the measuring tool to get the exact point as it gives you both bearing and distance. Heehee. There's a good reason to there being a rather prickly air defense on that site :) Here's a few hints on clearing it. Good luck!

Still alive here, if still keeping quite busy. But it's great to hear you liked it :) I suppose I might need to do a bit more testing on the CSAR/SAR when I have a moment. My code calculates the time based on direct distance between the rescue point and the field hospital, with the lower end of the cruising speed of the Huey as a reference. Plus it randomizes a 0-20% leeway ontop of that. If flying the higher end of the cruising speed it should be possible to make a few mistakes and still make it on time. I do also want it to be a bit of a challenge mind you :) Rather unfortunate and rude of the pubs then to behave so :/ But really one of the main ideas of the mission is specifically to have challenges that require co-operation between players in the air and the ground commander. It's basically where the name of the mission comes from too, while I've also worked on making it possible to finish without either party. Disabling the ground commander for open servers and alike is easy to do in the mission editor, I can instruct on how to do that if need be. I wouldn't mind the change if it was also noted visibly in the mission briefing or so. I could include a version of the mission with it already disabled, but that'd mean the download would include already four different versions of the same mission, or another download alltogether. Is this something others would be interested in as well? As to red requesting CSAR from blue side, that sounds rather strange.. I'll have to investigate. Thanks for the feedback :)

Certainly agree with you that the SU-25T can be a more 'in your face' type flying with the Vikhrs and other laser guided weapons. Definitely fun for some variety. Though of course the A-10 is also built around a gun, so just depends on the style I guess :) I got some good laughs out of taking on the higher difficulty mode of Blindsided alone with the SU-25T when testing the mission - including things like barrel rolling missiles with one working engine to get within S-25L range as it was all I had left :) It can do a real number on convoys with a few passes. One of the reasons I've put it into my missions has been to make them accessible to people who have not yet purchased modules, but that's certainly not the only reason. Hope you have fun.

Great to hear you've been enjoying the mission :) Thanks for confirming the fix too. I'd be quite curious to see how you took the mission on. Anything in particular that was good or bad? A few questions 1. Did you receive a message saying a pilot was down (with chute)? 2. The pilot was of your coalition (Blue) ? 3. Was someone in already CSAR aircraft when the CSAR mission began, or did you hop in one after? There's a few things that should happen when a CSAR mission begins. 1. You should get the message saying "pilot down", and the pilot should be added under the active CSAR mission listing in the F10 menu. 2. When you get close enough to the pilot in a CSAR aircraft you should receive another message and the pilot should pop green smoke. 3. When you land next to the pilot, they should walk towards you and board the helicopter. This requires your helicopter to be on the ground, close enough and completely stopped. 4. A bleedout timer then begins counting down, during which you need to fly over to the "Moscow" FARP / field hospital and land near enough to the truck in the lightly colored 'T' shaped area. 5. A message should then tell you the pilot was rescued. If CSAR fails to work, posting your DCS.log from that flight would be useful since it should contain error messages. A short track that replays accurately enough to see what's going on would be helpful, or an ACMI also would shed more light to the situation. I'll try have time to do a check on the pilot CSAR script a bit later myself, but I'm pretty short on time at the moment.

Version 1.0.1 released, available as soon as approved for download. Changelog: 1.0.1 - Fixed "global 'stateZhelez' (a nil value)" error which could occur after first task in mission was completed. - Modified Zhelez red surrender condition to 10 units left. - Added radio message for Ferret having been picked up.

Ah, thanks for letting me know. I'm pretty sure I know what's going on and will try and have a fix out for it soon. At least it isn't mission breaking problem, but it could cause issues for dedicated servers in particular.

Fun to hear back from people playing the mission. Those fighters sure aren't kidding around are they? :) Sounds like a good plan, good luck on the next attempt. I wanted there to be a mutual reliance between the pilots and the ground forces, and it's good to see people figuring out the gist of that too. Plus it's nice to see people also flying the SU-25T's in specific at that.

Comments like these just make my day :D. It's great to hear Blindsided has been so liked. Hope you'll enjoy the Two-Pin Hedgehog likewise. Heh, know what you mean on the lack of free time. Between work, some RL stuff and building there hasn't been much of it, but thankfully my SO has been understanding :music_whistling:. Anyway, building itself can be quite fun (not to mention frustrating if there's any perfectionist in you! :P), and I've got some nice time to take a break now and see how people like the new mission. Looking forward myself to hearing the comments and seeing the Tacview then :thumbup:. Flying and creativity are really some of my most favorite things, and as it happens DCS combines those two things quite nicely. In general I've rather liked how the DCS community tends to be quite helpful and shares things, so I guess this is my way of contributing :).

Thanks for the help with the beta testing. I can generally test things one at a time separately, but it's good to get in a full run or two. Especially with people who might do things differently as well. Hope you'll enjoy it, happy to hear it's keeping it's replayability at that :) I've done some more tweaking and put in a bit more scripting since the last time still. Things like being able to request the mission status from the F10 menu.

That seems to fit the bill. And here you go, The Two-Pin Hedgehog: (Link removed) Kindly prefer the ED download if it's available at the time. I'll probably remove this download once the actual ED one comes up and I've the time to do so. Edit: Official download is up, http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/498318/

Hey pirate010, nice to hear from you. Hope you'll love this one too :)

I guess I could do that for you Ranger79, but I'd also like to get some realistic numbers on how many times the mission has been downloaded. I know Sendspace doesn't do it, but maybe there's a site you'd recommend that keeps track of the downloads too?

Great to see interest in the mission. I hope you'll have fun flying it, a good few hours did go into it :) If it might be possible, it'd be great to get some ACMI logs recorded with Tacview (http://lomac.strasoftware.com/tacview-en.php) back on it. This is so I can see how people fly it and figure out how to make even better missions. It should be easy enough to upload them to http://www.sendspace.com/ or alike service.

Changelog: 1.0.0 - Initial version 1.0.1 - Fixed "global 'stateZhelez' (a nil value)" error which could occur after first task in mission was completed. - Modified Zhelez red surrender condition to 10 units left. - Added radio message for Ferret having been picked up. 1.1.0 - Rebuilt the optional Ferret CSAR (Combat Search And Rescue) objective. Red units at Zhelez must now be defeated first before Ferret can be picked up. - If Ferret is succesfully delivered in time, the players will be rewarded with AFAC (Airborne Forward Air Controller) support! - 33% of blue ground unit crews now survive to provide CSAR players with more to do if no pilot ejections occur. - 33% of red ground unit crews now survive to provide players with less heavy weapons more to do. - Short range CSAR missions will have their time padded to allow approximately 30 seconds for landing. The padding is added to the initial time limit, not during landing. - Fixed Ferret's smoke support incorrectly being still available after being picked up. 1.1.1 - Fixed potential script crash during Zhelez operation. - Improved efficiency of countGroupUnitsAlive function, now leveraging inbuilt getSize(). - Added reminder of useful commands in Radio F10 menu to mission briefing. - Changed SU-25T loadout to include MPS-410 ECM pods.

Two-Pin Hedgehog (v1.1.1) Mission download here (Thanks ED) Co-operative mission supporting upto: 2xGround, 2+2(Hot)x A-10C, 2+2(Hot)xKA-50, 4xSU-25T, 2+1(Hot) UH-1H, 2+1(Hot) Mi-8MTV2 (Recommended 2-6 players: GC + CAS) (Higher difficulty, 4-10 players: GC + CAS) - by DragonShadow Command: First we must stop the enemy advancing on the town of Inozemtsevo and our airfield. The situation out there may call for some unconventional tactics. Then we will strike back and silence the SAM site threatening our air forces at Podkumok. Remember, to succeed we must co-operate and depend on friendly forces to take out the threats greatest to us. Finally, to be victorious our ground forces will occupy the armor base of Mirmyy. Good luck! AWACS 'Overlord' available on 145.00 AM. Hostile air forces are active in the area. FARP and field hospital Moscow stands ready to support our helos at map grid LP27, southwest near Essentuki. 125.00 AM. Aimed at: Players comfortable with the Ground Commander, KA-50, A-10C, SU-25T, UH-1H or Mi-8MTV2 in combat or CSAR tasks and start up. Moderate difficulty level. If you want more challenge or to scale up for more players, simply run the higher difficulty version of the mission! Featuring: Co-op and single player support. Note: Difficulty higher for single player. A mission design based on co-operation between air and ground forces, rely on each other to win the day! A ground commander is recommended, but the mission can also be finished through issuing commands to ground forces with the F10 radio menu (Hint, units aim better when they are stopped.) [*] Major enemy positions are randomized every time you fly the mission, no mission will be quite the same! [*] Up-to-date tasking will be given even if a player enters the mission in the middle of it. Re-tasking can also be requested from the F10 menu, no more guessing what state the mission is in. [*] Several scripted events await you along the way, and should luck not be with you in the ground war - some reinforcements are still standing by. [*]A whole optional CSAR/CAS based side mission that runs parallel to the main one. Should you succeed in your task, your team will be rewarded! If you want to fly the Huey or Mi-8, you won't be left out. [*] Dynamically generated CSAR operations every time a pilot succesfully ejects, or if crew survives from a destroyed ground unit. Provided by MEDEVAC script from RagnarDa, with some modifications and integration to the mission. [*] Limited resources of war through the warehouse functionality, but plenty to go with. Flight recordings It'd be great to get some ACMI logs recorded with Tacview (http://lomac.strasoftware.com/tacview-en.php) back on the mission. This is so I can see how people fly it and figure out how to make even better missions. It should be easy enough to upload them to http://www.sendspace.com/ or alike service. Attributions: Speed, Grimes and everyone else involved with MIST (MIssion Scripting Tools) RagnarDa for creating the MEDEVAC script. Hagios and OddLizard for their aid with alpha testing and some suggestions. The VSAAF (Virtual South African Air Force) for their aid with beta testing and feedback. Initial build time: About three weeks with lots of scripting, testing and continued development. License: Freeware, distribution allowed as is with all files and attributions intact. All rights otherwise reserved, unless specifically agreed upon. (It's ok to ask.) Known issues: FIXED: "global 'stateZhelez' (a nil value)" error. FIXED: Very short range CSAR flights (Ex. 0.65nm) may be assigned too low time margin. FIXED: Potential script crash during Zhelez operation where units no longer alive were given orders. Kills of units may read back as 'Building' in multiplayer chat log. This is likely a side effect of them being recreated during randomization. Mission download here

Thanks for the feedback everyone :) It's quite nice to see it's generally positive, and to hear people are enjoying it. DCS Thor, noted. The AI can sometimes be such a nuisance to deal with, usually they can navigate that but I might have to look into making it a bit easier for them. Maybe I'll still release a small bugfix later on. HiJack, neat, I'm curious how the event went. You wouldn't happen to have a TacView ACMI on it? It'd be useful to me to see how organized groups interact with it. I've been working on optimizing it a bit more for open servers too, are there any experiences out there on how that's working out?

Additionally, might I make a request to mods to alter the name of this thread to 'Blindsided : DCS World co-op mission' ? To use this thread as a centralized location on everything about the mission. (Looks like this last post pushed the thread to the third page, but yes - 3rd revision is released now.)

Blindsided : 3rd revision released Blindsided : 3rd revision Mission download here Revision 3 changes: - Added 3x SU-27 with parallel CAP mission alongside CAS: Protect the airspace from enemy fighters and Batumi from air strikes. - If any SU-27 takes off, this will enable the CAP portion of the mission with randomized air threats. - Hostile air forces will be (temporarily) recalled after 10 minutes if no blue CAP is in the air. - Made aircraft unlimited, munitions still are limited (Better suited for open servers). - Marked any possible troop deployments along the road with a single Ural-375 to aid in spotting. - Slightly improved Batumi air defense for some protection from insurgent CAP. This is still players job in the end. - Made mission intro more Epic and removed (already rather small) chance of a player being hit by tank rounds during start up. - Made clearer some locations at waypoints for SU-25T in briefing. - Unified blue coalitions waypoints to enable faster communication, now everyones waypoint 2 is Force and waypoint 4 is outpost. - Added scripting for players to be notified of their current tasking when entering an aircraft. - Higher difficulty level can now be enabled by host at any portion of the mission (Host needs to make judgement on whether players are in danger zones.) - AFAC Predator forced to 'no radar using' not to appear on RWR. DCS bug? - Fixed edge case where mission could not be completed after insurgent advance was already marked stalled, and troops still got deployed. - Fixed Predator AFAC speed and alttitude. - Fixed waypoint speeds for route navigating autopilots (You are still likely to get shot though). - Spoiler: Fix attempted on Georgian FSG Molniya not disappearing (replaced) when boarded. - Spoiler: Insurgent leader threatened zone doubled in size. Escape not allowed while any player still within zone. - Other miscellaneous small fixes and balancing. Mission download here Co-operative mission supporting upto 12 players (2-3 recommended default, 3-8 on difficult). Flyable aircraft: 3xKa-50, 3xA-10C, 3xSU-25T, 3xSU-27 Limited munitions (Warehouse) - by DragonShadow Featuring: Co-op and single player support. Note: Difficulty higher for single player. Plenty of scripted events with radio traffic (text with audible notifier) and detailing. Combined operations of KA-50, A-10C, SU-25T and SU-27, all playing important but not interdependent roles (Set higher difficuly for best effect). Both air to ground and air to air operations, with optional randomized air threats. You can't be sure where the enemy air assets will strike from. CAS/CAP portions of the mission can run independently from each other, or together. All you need to do is fly the right aircraft and the mission commences. Up-to-date tasking will be given even if a player enters the mission in the middle of it. No more guessing what state the mission is in. Choice of two difficulty levels. Some more aggressive, scripted AI behaviour. Limited resources of war through the warehouse functionality. It now matters to make that landing. On the move troop deployments. Airlifted JTAC available (but not necessary) for operations against the insurgent outpost. Optional AFAC available for the defense phase of the mission. Be a part of a team where your actions truly matter to the outcome of the mission.

So I was going to just do a compatibility check with 1.2.3 and a few small fixes, but I may have gotten the teensiest bit carried away. Here are the raw notes (not complete) of the changes I'm beta-testing now: - Narrowed enemy victory condition area some. - Added 3x SU-27 for CAP. - If blue CAP takes off, enemy aircraft will start attacking from randomized directions. - If blue CAP is not active for 10 minutes, insurgent CAP will be (temporarily) recalled. - Made aircraft unlimited, munitions still are limited. - Marked any possible troops deployed along the road with a single Ural-375 to aid in spotting. - Slightly improved Batumi air defense for some protection from insurgent CAP. This is still players job in the end. - Made mission intro more Epic and removed (already small) chance of a player being hit by tank rounds during start up. - Fixed edge case where mission could not be completed after insurgent advance was already marked stalled, and troops still got deployed. - Fixed Predator AFAC speed and alttitude. - Made clearer some locations at waypoints for SU-25T in briefing.